


Hell Hath No Fury Like A Hero Scorned

by tielan



Series: Meeting Halfway [24]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 30 Day OTP Challenge, Arguing, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Relationship Issues, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26356810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Hill has no Fury, just a hero scorned...
Relationships: Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Nick Fury & Maria Hill
Series: Meeting Halfway [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30267
Comments: 11
Kudos: 88





	Hell Hath No Fury Like A Hero Scorned

**Author's Note:**

> Day 23 of the 30 Days of OTP challenge: Arguing.
> 
> I finished this a couple of weeks ago, but couldn't bring myself to post it at the time. And then the news came that Chadwick Boseman died and...it really wasn't the time. So. Here is your authorial warning at the start: THIS IS NOT THE HAPPY ENDING YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.

The call comes mid-morning, while she's reviewing intel on a lab in Guilin, China. She flags it for HK to follow up, even as her phone buzzes and Fury's codename comes up.

"This is Hill."

"I need someone in Bogota in twenty-four hours. Can you make it?"

Twenty-four hours? She glances at the clock by the kitchen table and meets Steve's frowning gaze over the lunch he's preparing. "I'm in Europe."

"That's why I asked."

Either there's no-one closer - which seems unlikely, or else he needs someone he trusts to go there. Maria tears her eyes from Steve's face. "Send me the details."

She puts the phone down and starts logging into the system that she and Fury set up after SHIELD.

"When do you leave?" His voice is even, but she feels the censure in it all the same.

"As soon as possible." The details of what he's assigned her appear on the screen. An extraction for an operative-- Her breath hisses out as she sees what's needed and why Fury asked her to do it.

_Goddamit, Akela. What were you doing there?_

She's up and heading for her room when Steve catches her arm. "Do you need help?"

Maria bites back the retort. _If I needed help, I'd have asked for it._ He's just doing what he does; being a hero. And because he's a hero, she can't take him along. "No; I can manage this."

"All right." For a moment, he looks like he's going protest before he swallows it. "Do you have time to eat lunch at least?"

She looks from him to the table where everything's set out. A meal for two, slow and leisurely, with a planned afternoon of shooting practice out in the warm countryside and a quiet night together. "Only a quick one. I'm sorry, Steve."

He lets her go with a swift, fierce kiss. "So am I."

* * *

The diversion takes all of one hour, and she's only a little late back to the cafe. Steve's legs are stretched out and his eyes are hidden behind sunglasses under a ballcap. Still, as Maria tucks the package under the table, she knows he's watching her.

"Side trip?"

"Package." She tries to smile at him as her coffee comes out. He must have ordered for her after she texted to say she was on her way. "How did you like sightseeing the old city?"

"I'd have liked it better sightseeing with you."

"I'm here now," she points out. "We can go after."

The streets are full of tourists; people wandering back and forth, some of them trying to keep track of which street they're in; others not even trying. The ones who are here to shop are obvious, their gazes flicking on past the temple on the other side of the road, their attention caught by the bright bits and pieces available for sale.

Steve glances up as the server brings out a slice of cake, but waits until the man is gone before asking, "Tell me the truth, Maria. Would you have come out to meet me if you didn't have something to pick up?"

"Yes." Of course she would. "But the pickup is a bonus."

She doesn't expect her wide-eyed look to earn her any points. She was never good at cozening people before she met Steve; she hasn't gotten any better just because they're seeing each other. Still, Steve sounds more wry than annoyed as he murmurs,"I'm not sure if I should be glad that I'm not the add-on, or resentful that I'm not considered the bonus."

There's probably no way to win this argument. At least, not conventionally. And he's not a convenience - far from it, in fact. Which is why Maria tugs Steve's hand across the table and slips her mouth over his when he leans in.

* * *

Her phone shrills over on the other side of the bed. Maria has to lean over Steve to reach it - an expanse of warm chest that she'd love to be dragging herself across in circumstances that don't involve what's possibly an emergency.

The arm that slides around her waist and holds her against that chest would be welcome at almost any other time--

"Steve!"

"Ten minutes..." His mouth finds hers, moulds, clings--

Maria flails for the phone, gets one fingernail hooked on the phone case and has it in her hand just as Steve rolls them over. She glimpses the caller ID even as his mouth starts on her neck.

It's an emergency. "It's Nick."

Steve stiffens - not in the good way - before he sighs and rolls off her as Maria answers. "Sir?"

"Panic Plan Three," Nick growls. "Madrid, 2007. Four quarters to the half."

"Copy that. Three halves to the third." As the line goes dead, she's already dragging herself out of the warm bed and the hot lover in it. "I've got to go."

"I can back you up."

She's tempted for a moment before she shakes her head and pulls on her underthings. "It's...there's no time to explain."

"Make the time." The note in his voice grates across her nerves, and she looks at him, sitting in the rumpled sheets of the bed. "It takes me four months of calls and texts and mails to persuade you to meet for just a weekend, but Fury makes _one_ phonecall and you're off again."

"This is important."

"And I'm not?" He seems to hear the stupidity of that as soon as it's said, which at least saves Maria from having to point it out. But she doesn't know what to do with this. Because this looks like...jealousy. Jealousy. In Steve Rogers. Of a man who's thirty years older and who Maria has never even thought of that way.

Sure, she would defend Nick Fury with her life, but there is no power on Earth or off it that would get her into bed with him.

She sticks with what's safe: the facts. "I have to go."

"Okay." But his tone makes it quite clear that it's not okay and it can't be okay. And Maria doesn't know what to do with that. She can't take him along, they're not her secrets to share, and she's not obligated to share them with him. Is she?

He drives her to the airport in silence. Communication is bare bones; a question here, a monosyllabic answer there.

He kisses her at the airport and tells her he'll call her.

Maria doesn't expect he will.

* * *

Four quarters to the half means someone is dead - and worse, has given up intel on their way to dead.

It means there's a lot of cleaning up to do, a lot of reshuffling, and the possibility that they'll lose some people.

Many of these people no longer work for SHIELD. Their careers have gone in other directions, have taken other paths. That doesn't mean that they're not still on some hitlist or another for what they did while they were with SHIELD. _Bested enemies have the longest memories_ , went the old intel saying, and Maria has never found it false.

The other saying is, _You don't know about the blow you can't see coming._

When Maria arrives in south-eastern Europe to meet with Nick, three former SHIELD agents are dead or dying. Their deaths appear accidental; heart failure, car accident, broken neck from a fall... Nick has managed to get two more to shelter, which leaves another two to be eased out of their situation over the next two weeks.

This is what Maria's good at; logistics, management, knowing who to contact and how to get things moving. It doesn't mean it's _easy_. By the time the entire south-east Europe division has been relocated to the south-west, and various operatives from the south-west moved to cover the south-east, Maria just wants to fly back to New York, turn up at Pepper's penthouse, and flop down for a cocktail or three. And then wander tipsily into Steve's quarters and be put to bed.

She stares at her phone for a long time before making the call.

It rings for what seems like a long time, and when he answers, there's music in the background and a woman's familiar laugh, light and lilting, before Steve speaks.

"Hello?" His voice still carries the warmth of amusement.

Maria looks blankly at the wall. Her first instinct is to hang up. Her thoughts aren't anywhere near coherent, snagging on the laughter and the amusement and the dissonance between how she feels and how Steve feels and--

"Hello?" The amusement is gone, a more serious tone to it now. "I can't hear you if you're speaking."

"Hey." It's a croak, forced out from a dry throat. Then she regrets saying even that much to identify herself.

"Maria? Where are you? Are you okay?"

In the background, she hears Sharon ask, "Maria--?"

"It's nothing important. I just thought I'd..." Maria squeezes her eyes closed. "I'm fine. You're busy and I'll call back later."

"Wait, Maria--"

But she hangs up and hastily turns the phone to silent. Even as she drops the phone on the couch, it starts to vibrate. She shoves it under the couch cushions.

_It doesn't-- It's not like that,_ she tells herself. _Steve doesn't do that._ And yet she feels weirdly nauseous and her hands are shaking.

Maria is struck by the conviction that she can't stay here right now. It's not... The word her brain comes up with is 'safe'. But that's not-- That can't be right--

The phone isn't stopping its vibrations. And it won't for a while, she knows. But she won't answer it. She's not sure she can talk coherently at this moment. She needs to be somewhere else - somewhere the phone _isn't_.

So she grabs her coat and her shoulderbag and flees the safehouse, her hands gripped tightly around each other so they won't tremble as the elevator doors close her in.

* * *

Four hours later, having checked in with a half-dozen agents throughout western Europe, having eaten dinner with a glass of wine and done some heavy thinking, Maria lets herself wearily back into the apartment.

And stops in the entryway, because Nick is sitting on the lounge, thumbing through _Italian Vogue_. He doesn't look up.

"Rogers made contact," he says turning a page. "Said you hung up on him and weren't answering. He _insisted_ I check in on you."

"I left the phone behind."

"I can see that." He closes the magazine and lays it down on the coffee table next to the abandoned phone. "How is everything?"

'Everything' could mean work, or it could mean...other things. Maria takes it to mean work, because that's safer and easier and less awkward territory for everyone.

"Debruyne has the others settling in, and Haaken thinks she might have a lead on who's been targeting our people here. Everyone's on yellow alert, but they seem in good spirits." She takes off her coat and sits down. "You didn't come because Steve asked you to."

"No, although he _was_ very insistent." Nick stretches out his legs. "Hill, have you ever wondered what you might be if you weren't helping save the world so often?"

"No."

"Why not?"

She half-laughs. "Because you saw what I was when S.H.I.E.L.D picked me up."

Trying to fit in the military but out of step with the times. A woman who wanted too much, who wouldn't play nice for the egos, who couldn't keep her head down and just carry on, who wouldn't do what was ordered just because it was ordered. Who'd been wondering where to go once the military threw her out, only to have a situation, a city, and a job offer land in her lap.

"I didn't mean before S.H.I.E.L.D. I meant after we discovered HYDRA was using it as a hat. Do you ever think about what you'd be now if you'd done what Blake did? Or Anderson? Or Carter?" Nick's eyes narrow slightly, but he makes no comment at her flinch.

"I generally try not to."

Nick looks at her for a long time in silence.

"Hill, if I had to pick someone to run operations backup to help save the world, you'd top the list every time. But - and don't take this the wrong way, Maria - sometimes, I wish you weren't quite so good at it."

* * *

"I would have taken your call," Steve says when she calls him later that evening. "You didn't have to hang up."

"Yes, I did." Her hands are trembling again, but her voice is rock steady. "Steve...where is this going? Us?"

"Where do you see it going?"

Maria takes a deep breath. "I don't."

The silence on the other end is telling. For a moment, she wishes she could see his expression. Then, "Why not?"

Because he needs a woman who doesn't work in the middle of her time with him. Because she wants someone who doesn't see her and what she does as a liability. Because they're all wrong together and the sooner she yanks her heart out of the fire, the less time she'll spend trying to heal her blistered and burned soul.

When she takes too long to answer, Steve asks, "Is this about what I said about Fury?"

"No. But... I can't do this anymore. I thought I could, but it's...not working out."

This time the silence goes longer. "How, exactly, would you say it's not working out?"

Panic grips her, like a hand around her throat - the kind of fear that she never lets get the better of her. The kind of fear that she kicks in the balls, shoves to the kerb, and walks past before it can get its hooks in her. The fear that every detractor she ever had is right, that every person who ever sneered at her saw the truth, that every person who ever claimed to appreciate her was lying.

For some reason, though, this time it chokes in her throat.

"I can't-- I can't say."

"You can't say?"

She can't say - not without stripping her psyche down to the skin, and she's not willing to do that. She's not ready. She doesn't think she'll ever be ready to explain to him why they're a bad idea, why she shouldn't have gotten involved with him in the first place.

"Steve... Can we just..." _Can we just not. Can we just walk away. Can we just forget that this ever happened..._

"Yes. We can 'just'. 'No' is a complete sentence, after all."

He speaks with a thoughtful deliberation, and Maria braces for the second half - because that can't be all of it.

"But?"

"But after the last couple of years, that's it?"

"What else did you want?"

"A reason. A _real_ reason, not the bullshit you're giving me." Anger and frustration crawls through every syllable. "I won't say you owe it to me, Maria, although clearly I missed something along the way, but I would like to know _why_."

"I can't--"

" _Why_ can't you--?" He breaks off. "This won't go anywhere, will it?"

"I'm sorry, Steve."

"But not sorry enough to-- No, I didn't say that." The laugh is short and tearing. "All right, then, Maria. I guess I'll see you the next time the world needs saving."

Maria stares at the 'call ended' screen on her phone until the screen goes dark from inaction. Then she locks up the apartment, checks her mail, and climbs into bed.

She doesn't sleep until nearly dawn.

* * *

There have been few people in Maria's life who she ever belonged to - few people who were willing to claim her for what she was and what she could be.

Organisations fight to gain the loyalty and interest of the Natasha Romanovs of the world; but women like Maria Hill are a liability.

And yet when she went to work in Stark Tower, Nick simply asked, _Will you keep in touch?_ as though there was a possibility she might say no. When she resigned from the Avengers facility to manage ex-SHIELD assets behind the scenes, he brought her favourite Chicago-style deep-dish pizza to the safehouse - pepperoni, spinach, and mushroom. When he found out about her relationship with Steve, he just fixed her with a long and measuring look before he moved the conversation on - no warnings, no questions, no demands.

Nick has always behaved as though she's an asset, not a liability.

And so has Steve.

The difference is that she _is_ a liability to Steve.

Or, more correctly, she's a liability to a man whose whole life is given over to being a hero.

_I guess I'll see you the next time the world needs saving._

A man like Steve wouldn't keep a woman he has to chase after all the time - a woman who he has to contact for four months before she'll see him, who’ll then leave in the middle of their time together. A man like Steve is supposed to be the one who gets the call for help, who climbs out of the car to head off to his business, who spends long hours working and has to be lured to bed.

A man like Steve has his own fights to fight, his own calls to heed. Maria can't be the woman he goes back to at the end of the battle, his refuge at the end of the day. If she’s the one he’s coming home to, then he’ll come home to an empty house every time.

That's not who she is, who she’s made to be. She’s not made to sit quietly on the sideline while things happen that she could stop – and neither is he. Not when there are outcomes they could affect, resist, fight.

_If I had to pick someone to run operations backup to help save the world, you'd top the list every time. But sometimes, I wish you weren't quite so good at it._

Maria has lived with the knowledge that she's not pretty or feminine or charming or motherly or any of the markers that are usually important for a woman.

She's Agent Chill Pill, the Ice Queen, Fury's Bitch.

She doesn't give way, she doesn't bend, she doesn't break.

She's not Jane Foster or Pepper Potts. She's not Laura Barton, keeping house and hearth and heart. And she's not Natasha, who can make herself into anything she needs to be for the situation at hand.

She's not Sharon Carter, who was deliberately positioned in close quarters with Steve to be a friendly face and a watchful eye, because Sharon's good at making people feel comfortable around her, getting them to let their guard down, and then doing what needs to be done, whether that's pointing a gun at them or climbing into bed with them.

It would be easy to target Sharon for this.

Only, the problem isn't Sharon or the way she made Steve laugh earlier. The problem isn't even Steve or his crusade to save - or possibly fight - the world.

The problem is that Maria Hill is...Maria Hill.

And Maria Hill is entirely wrong for Steve Rogers.

Worse, she knows it and she always did. She just thought...maybe...somehow...things might turn out in her favour for once.

She should’ve known better than that.

* * *

It's a long, cold fall in Central Europe, and Maria spends November and December not only burning the candle at both ends, but setting the whole damn thing on fire.

At Christmas, Fury drags her down to South America to help him gather intel on cartels that have just begun dealing in Chitauri biochemistry. It's warmer, and brighter – summer solstice in the Southern hemisphere – and it’s somewhere that's different enough that Maria has to change gears, even to do her work.

In the sweltering heat of Brazil’s central west region, she does the research, follows up the intel, brushes up on her Spanish and her Portuguese, and flirts like her heart’s in it.

Well, maybe not that last. But she was always a terrible flirt anyway.

Over the summer, she gets a little better at flirting. A _very_ little. 

So she's almost feeling solid again when the alien ships turn up over New York.

Tony makes a splash in the news, of course, because Tony _always_ makes a splash in the news. The problem is when his splash takes out Peter Parker with him - the kid is last seen clinging to the alien ship as it leaves Earth, and only the sight of Tony zooming after the kid stays Maria's hand from calling Tony and leaving a scathing message.

After that, the news that Steve, Natasha, and Sam have been spotted battling it out with an alien or three in Scotland is practically expected.

Something is going down. Something big.

_If I had to pick someone to run operations backup to help save the world, you'd top the list every time._

Except that this time Nick's not in charge of organising operations backup to help save the world.

Although it turns out he's been co-opted by someone who _is_.

" _I've had a call from the General of Wakanda,_ " he said when he called her. " _She wants us to liaise with their people in New York to do damage control._ "

" _Us?_ "

" _She mentioned you before I could ask permission to drag you along. If you're up for it._ "

Maria says yes.

She’ll have to see Steve sooner or later. And he did say they'd meet the next time the world needed saving. Besides, there's not even any guarantee he'll be where the clean-up will be taking place.

Not that Maria would be avoiding him, even if he was in the city. They're both mature adults. And it's been nearly six months. Time heals and all that.

" _Where am I meeting you?_ "

Eight hours later, they're off the flight and on their way to meet with the Wakandan clean-up squads in New York when the news comes that the alien ships are back - this time, over Wakanda.

Nearly an hour later, an empty SUV swings out of control across their lane. A chopper crashes wildly into a nearby building. And people start dissolving into dust on the street.

Maria feels a clutching moment of terror—

“ _Nick—_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am writing the next installment. Yes, it will follow on from here.


End file.
